Homuth stepped down as CEO of SRTX in March as part of a pending fundraising deal.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The founder and former CEO of SRTX is pivoting from high-tech textile manufacturing to memory software for companies, just as the startup she once led closes on key financing and elects her replacement.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\u201cWe\u2019re running companies with amnesia. Founders forget the lessons they swore they\u2019d never repeat.\u201d<\/p>\n
Katherine Homuth<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
In a Substack post<\/a> today, Katherine Homuth announced she is launching a new venture, Oomira<\/a>, to build companies a \u201cqueryable\u201d archive of every decision they\u2019ve ever made. Homuth\u2019s announcement comes as her previous textile startup, SRTX, has appointed CFO Timothy Leyne as interim CEO and closed more than half of a much-needed $40-million USD fundraising deal set to close in July, as first reported by The Globe & Mail<\/a> and confirmed by BetaKit. <\/p>\n
In late March, Homuth announced she was stepping down as CEO<\/a> of the textile startup, which manufactures Sheertex rip-resistant tights. Homuth\u2019s departure came as part of the fundraising round, as SRTX contended with trade uncertainty around United States (US) tariffs. SRTX temporarily laid off<\/a> roughly 40 percent of its staff in February amid the tariff threat.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Homuth described Oomira, which has yet to officially launch, as a software backend layer that contains data about a company\u2019s institutional memory\u2014including business decisions, who made them, and how they panned out.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re running companies with amnesia,\u201d Homuth wrote. \u201cFounders forget the lessons they swore they\u2019d never repeat. Teams re-pitch failed ideas like they\u2019re new. People rerun tests they already buried.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the post, Homuth\u2019s idea was borne of frustration. She decided to try and create an accurate memory layer for businesses last summer after attempting to use ChatGPT to write a movie script based on SRTX\u2019s journey. Despite her crafting a detailed spreadsheet and timeline of events, \u201cThe machine didn\u2019t get it,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
RELATED: <\/strong>SRTX founder and CEO Katherine Homuth to step down amid fundraising push and tariff threat<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n
Homuth envisions a four-phase development process. First, she plans to offer archival services to a few companies this summer, then a beta platform for companies to build and interact with software layers containing historical data by the fall. Third, she hopes to launch a developer platform, and finally, she wants Oomira to offer a simulator for companies to model outcomes based on past data.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Homuth said that Oomira hopes to work closely with clients such as startups, venture capital firms, and manufacturers to build an archive of their past decisions and data. The service, which Homuth plans to take a hands-on role in delivering at first, will cost clients $50,000 USD in total: half up-front and half after delivery.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Oomira plans to transition to a subscription-based model, Homuth said. She added that she is using generative AI to build Oomira, which she hopes will serve companies that are building on top of existing large language models.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cLike any company founded in 2025, the entire build, from architecture to design, dev, and marketing, is being superpowered by other generative AI tools,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Homuth told BetaKit that she is not planning to fundraise for Oomira, at least at first, but rather to rely on customer revenue to fund operations. Right now, the team is just Homuth with \u201ca tight crew of specialized contractors.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe goal is to stay lean, focused, and insanely execution-oriented until revenue becomes predictable enough to justify headcount,\u201d Homuth said. \u201cI\u2019m not interested in building a bloated org chart; I\u2019m building infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n
The announcement breaks a months-long social media silence from Homuth, who had previously been candid online about the struggles of fundraising for a hardtech company. On The BetaKit Podcast<\/a>, Homuth said she felt as though she had \u201clost her voice,\u201d and that posting publicly about fundraising challenges felt like \u201cripping a band-aid off.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
RELATED: <\/strong>Katherine Homuth revisited<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n
But in a LinkedIn post<\/a> today, Homuth hinted at how her outspokenness impacted her journey at SRTX.<\/p>\n
\u201cTurns out being open about not having it all figured out, isn\u2019t always welcomed,\u201d Homuth wrote. \u201cIt can feel a bit like wearing white pants to a tomato sauce tasting: brave, but not particularly well-advised. A few months later, I\u2019m no longer part of the Sheertex story. The reasons are layered, and the blanks are yours to fill in.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the deal terms for SRTX\u2019s latest fundraising round was that Homuth and any future SRTX CEO sign a communications and social-media policy, according to The Globe & Mail<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Homuth told BetaKit that she is developing a \u201cFounder Constitution,\u201d a resource of templates to help other startup founders avoid the mistakes she\u2019s made in the past.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Homuth founded SRTX in Muskoka, Ont., in 2017 as Sheerly Genius. With more than half of its target $40 million USD financing secured, SRTX has raised approximately $270 million USD in debt and equity to date, according to the company.\u201d It was valued at roughly $350 million USD in 2022.<\/p>\n
The founder previously built hardware platform ShopLocket<\/a>, which was acquired in 2014 by global manufacturing and design company PCH and angel investing group Female Funders, which was acquired by Highline BETA<\/a> in 2017.<\/p>\n
Feature image courtesy The BetaKit Podcast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Homuth stepped down as CEO of SRTX in March as part of a pending fundraising deal. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":99843,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3094],"tags":[323,51,3134,2928,46386,16102,46389,6938,363,4120,46388,46387,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-99842","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entrepreneurship","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-entrepreneurship","11":"tag-hardware","12":"tag-katherine-homuth","13":"tag-montreal","14":"tag-oomira","15":"tag-quebec","16":"tag-retail","17":"tag-saas","18":"tag-sheertex","19":"tag-srtx","20":"tag-uk","21":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114504271390311385","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}